Anne-Sophie Mutter returns to Vivaldi's four concertos with a reading so personal and magnetic that it stands superbly apart . . . Mutter is above all deeply reflective, reacting emotionally to each movement, allowing herself a free expansiveness at generally broad speeds. Not surprisingly, this is a far more intimate reading than her previous version with Karajan and the Vienna Philharmonic.

“Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ is a unique celebration of life, a veritable riot of colour”

A conversation with the man without a tie in row 17

Anne-Sophie Mutter: Could I start our little discussion by changing places with you and asking you one or two questions – questions from a violinist to a journalist who has heard her play these works by Vivaldi and Tartini live with the Trondheim Soloists?

Harald Wieser: With the greatest of pleasure. But don’t expect a critic au fait with the subtleties of spiccato bowing and double-stopping and sporting a silver tie. Ask the man in row 17 who sits there open-mouthed with amazement. Just ask your public.

A.-S. M.: Very well then, dear public. Can you still remember my early recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, which I made with Herbert von Karajan and the Vienna Philharmonic in 1984?

H. W.: Yes, indeed. There was a photograph of you on the cover sitting on the forest floor with your Stradivarius and with Herr von Karajan standing beside you among the trees, a bright red pullover draped over his shoulder.

A.-S. M.: You’ve answered with your eyes. I’ll tell you in a moment why I particularly want listeners to use their eyes in the case of the present recording, but first I’d like to bend your ear, as it were. Do you hear different sounds when you compare the two Vivaldi recordings – the old one and the newer one?

H. W.: Can one hear the difference? One can even savour it. The recording that you made with Herbert von Karajan and the Vienna Philharmonic was very beautiful. Very beautiful, but also very stolid. It was like a good, heavy red wine. A musical High Mass celebrating the Four Seasons. But it is the popping of vintage champagne corks that one hears in your playing with these young Norwegians, playing in which you yourself are so infectiously youthful and one can almost literally see the twinkle in your eye.

A.-S. M.: If only we had a bottle! I’d be happy to open it to thank you for your kind remarks.

H. W.: Don’t put temptation in my way! But there’s a further compliment that I must pay you. For me, the High Mass has been turned into a high spirited celebration, with a pure and sometimes even boisterous delight in music-making. In the Presto from “Summer” and the Allegro from “Autumn”, the Trondheimers literally leap from their seats, such is their sense of pleasure and high spirits. This goes even for the phenomenal Knut at the harpsichord. And I’m still stone-cold sober. Your Four Seasons for Karajan was an example of life as art. The present recording, under your own direction, is an example of art as life. The mellow maestro’s devotional exercises have become a feast of emotion on the part of the eternally youthful Anne-Sophie.

A.-S. M.: Ah, the man in row 17 must be a speed freak. He prefers the Porsche-like speed of lively tempi. Don’t you like the slow movements, with their mischievously cruel streak, with Vivaldi turning the violins into flies buzzing incessantly round a shepherd? With an impudence that is almost palpable?

H. W.: But he can appreciate the slow movements on a physical level, too. When the crisp cold of “Winter” stole into the well-heated concert hall in the Allegro non molto, he even felt himself struggling to fight off a cold. But it’s not so much the sustained movements as the fiery ones that mark the difference between smouldering desire and white-hot passion – the difference, in short, between your older and newer recordings.

A.-S. M.: I’d never have made another Vivaldi recording with a symphony orchestra. The same goes for Tartini’s “Devil’s Trill” Sonata. Obviously, a huge, eighty-strong orchestra can produce an emotional firework display, but there’s not much subtlety to it. For the filigree finesse of Tartini’s music and the sparkling exchanges between the different instruments in Vivaldi, to say nothing of the wonderful spontaneity of both composers and the sort of tone-painting that delights in the tiniest ornaments, the symphony orchestra is like a Rolls Royce trying to negotiate a country lane. Here the little paper boat of chamber music, with its keenly balanced textures, can almost certainly invest his intimate moods and exchanges with a greater sense of effervescent wit.

H. W.: Tartini’s “Devil’s Trill” Sonata and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons enjoy a legendary reputation as classics of narrative programme music. Vivaldi’s work is based on sonnets that describe a cuckoo calling and dogs barking. There are critics who wrinkle their noses at what they regard as the lightweight nature of these “greatest hits”.

A.-S. M.: Enter the critics. I’d like to invite them to play these lightweight hits as audition pieces. After all, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons inspired a work as complex as Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony. Admittedly, Vivaldi isn’t so very different from Mozart in terms of his purely technical difficulty: these pieces contain no hurdle that a good music student couldn’t clear as a teenager. But art involves more than just playing a piece quickly, cleanly and accurately. Art consists in investing the score with a soul. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is a unique celebration of life, a veritable riot of colour. It takes a sensitive violinist to bring out this riot of colour in the form of a tone-painting.

H. W.: Open, Sesame! This brings us on to your favourite painter, Gotthard Graubner, to whom you pay more than just a decorative tribute with your new CD.

A.-S. M.: Yes, without Gotthard Graubner’s painting, this Vivaldi CD simply wouldn’t exist. It was because of his work that I said earlier that I’d like my public to listen to my interpretation with their eyes as well as their ears. The idea of making this recording came to me on one of my visits to Gotthard Graubner’s studio. The images I saw made me think I was listening to Vivaldi’s music. There is such a close affinity here between light and shade on the part of both the modern painter and the Baroque composer. This explosive spark, this flash of lightning in the art of both men! Graubner’s images convey a sense of the most extreme elemental force that resembles the musical storms conjured up by Vivaldi. But in the same breath I find the most delicate transparency in both artists: notes and colours that weigh as light as a feather, as though I were being breathed on by a tiny creature as it comes into existence. Teeny-weeny abstractions. Brainspun beings smaller than any embryo.

H. W.: The most famous twins in the history of art are the composer Arnold Schoenberg and the painter Vasily Kandinsky. One of them freed music from tonality, while the other freed painting from representationalism. But with them the miracle of their affinity isn’t so great, since they lived at the same time and exchanged ideas. Antonio Vivaldi and Gotthard Graubner are separated by almost three centuries. Your feelings for them represent an incredible balancing act between the Baroque and modernism.

A.-S. M.: I think we have to redefine what is modern in the arts, including music. For me, it’s as though Antonio Vivaldi and Gotthard Graubner were on the phone to each other several times a day.

The writer Harald Wieser has discussed Anne-Sophie Mutter’s life with her on frequent occasions with a view to writing a book, which will be published under the title “Die Seele der Musik”.

From a conversation with Gotthard Graubner on his conception of the relationship between Painting and Music

There are painters who use colour in a symbolic way, just as there are composers who use tone colour in music. My own paintings are not at all symbolic: for me, colour is already sufficient as a theme.

There are also composers who forgo symbolism altogether in their music.

I myself have been intensively connected with music since my early childhood. As a child I played the violin. I sometimes give my works musical titles.

In painting people very often speak of colour tones.

The composer Alexander Scriabin moved in the opposite direction, from music to colour, in his attempt to ascribe a different colour to every chord of his own harmonic system. The Hungarian composer Viktor László later took a similar line.

I have often been asked whether my paintings contain musical references. This is undoubtedly the case, although I hasten to add that my pictures are not illustrations of music. They are a sensitive reaction to the music that I listen to while working.

The analytical aspect is of less interest to me than the idea of giving visual transformations to my perceptions.

When Olivier Messiaen was inspired by birdsong in his compositions, he did not simply write down what he heard, rather he converted the flow of energy.

In my own view, the audience must breathe with the work in question, whether they are listening to a piece of music or looking at a painting.

1930 Gotthard Graubner born at Erlbach, Vogtland Studies at the Academies of Art in Berlin, Dresden and Düsseldorf

since 1962 Kissenbilder (“cushion paintings”)

1965 Appointed to the Academy of Art in Hamburg

1968-1971 Environments – Nebelräume (“fog spaces”)

1968 Exhibits at the Documenta IV in Kassel since 1970

Farbraumkörper (“colour space bodies”)

1971 Exhibits at the São Paulo Biennale

1976 Professorship also at the State Academy of Art in Düsseldorf

1977 Exhibits at the Documenta VI in Kassel

1982 Exhibits at the Venice Biennale

1988 Two large-scale paintings, commissioned by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany for the official residence in Berlin, “Schloss Bellevue”

1999 Large-scale commissioned work for the Reichstag in Berlin

Lives and works in Düsseldorf, Berlin and on the Museum-Insel Hombroich, Neuss

The Trondheim Soloists were formed in 1988 by the Norwegian violinist Bjarne Fiskum. After studying music in Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Vienna, Bjarne Fiskum began his professional career with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra in 1960 and was the orchestra’s deputy leader from 1965 to 1973. Between 1977 and 1984 he was leader of the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra. Since 1983 he has taught the violin at the Trondheim Conservatory of Music. In 1995 he received the Lindemann Prize, one of his country’s most prestigious awards. He is also a founder member of the Trondheim String Quartet, which he helped to form in 1994.

The Trondheim Soloists attest to Bjarne Fiskum’s ability to draw out the best from each of his musicians and to create an ensemble capable of achieving the highest international standards. The chamber orchestra consists, in part, of young and highly talented students and, in part, of professional musicians. Thanks to their youthful energy and immense enthusiasm the players have received outstanding reviews for their tours of England, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Brazil, France and Scandinavia. During the spring of 1999 the Trondheim Soloists and Anne-Sophie Mutter undertook an extensive tour with the present programme of works, appearing not only throughout Germany but also in France, Denmark and Norway.

The Poem

When Vivaldi’s The “Four Seasons” was first published in Amsterdam in 1725, each of the concertos was prefaced by an Italian sonnet which acted as a “programme” for the work following it. The four sonnets printed here may well have been written by Vivaldi himself.